Strange Class.forName() problem

[Frank B. Brokken]

Dear listmembers,

    I ran into a weird problem: I'm probably overlooking something, but
somehow I don't see what it is.

I have the following small application (using jdk 1.1.7-v1a, on a glibc based
Linux system)

public class classname
{
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        try
        {
            Class
                c = Class.forName("String");
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            System.out.println(e);
        }
    }
}

This program generates

        java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: String

and I don't understand why. When I use the full class name, i.e.,

                ...
                c = Class.forName("java.lang.String");
                ...

execution proceeds flawlessly, but this is obviously not what I want. What on
earth am I doing wrong ?

If anybody could help me out, I'd be VERY grateful!

-- 
    Frank B. Brokken        (al sinds enige jaren uitgedost (untranslatable))
    My extended signature is at http://www.icce.rug.nl/frank/signature